Increasingly, computer systems have needed to protect themselves against undesirable computer code. Such undesirable computer code has generally taken the form of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, and so forth. The damage and/or inconvenience capable of being incurred by these types of undesirable code has ranged from mild interference with a program, such as the display of an unwanted political message in a dialog box, to the complete destruction of contents on a hard drive, and even the theft of personal information.
Some types of software are more vulnerable to the above undesirable code than others. For example, rootkits are particularly vulnerable. In some situations, a rootkit may be used to allow hackers to “spoof” system commands, so as to hide directories, files, processes, applications, etc. of their choice. In this way, hackers are able to utilize rootkits to monitor and/or control what transpires between an application and an operating system of a target system.
Unfortunately, currently available security applications do not effectively detect these types of intrusions for a variety of reasons. For instance, operating system commands, files, executables, etc. themselves may be compromised by having been subjected to a rootkit attack. Thus, the security applications used to detect a rootkit attack may themselves be infected by the rootkit attack, rendering them useless.
There is thus a need for overcoming these and/or other problems associated with the prior art.